


Toppling the card tower (that was called SHIELD)

by Littlesnake



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-19 00:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1448038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlesnake/pseuds/Littlesnake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything goes to pieces, but no one picks them up. They just learn to live with the shards, jagged edges and all that. </p>
<p>Maria Hill dealing with the events pre, during and post the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Toppling the card tower (that was called SHIELD)

Maria Hill was generally tough to surprise - it was part of the job requirement. Surprise implies vulnerability and in times when no sort of strength offered a guarantee, vulnerability had no place in SHIELD, in her world.

(On some days the line between the two was blurred, on most days it disintegrated entirely.)

This was her fourth year as Deputy. She had taken the job expecting conspiracies and rogue assassinations, wrangling politicians and bureaucrats, ruthless decisions and putting a toe and half across the line.

In her first year an alien landed in the middle of New Mexico and Fury threw her a book on Greek mythology.

The next year more aliens decided to drop by New York and thoroughly thrashed downtown Manhattan. It was then that the thin ice began to crack; the flaws grow more obvious, and the Avengers dream was realised at a terrible cost.

The Avengers split up while Stark retreated into his tin shell, took down a terrorist-cum-something plot involving presidents and a whole bunch of soldiers before blowing up all his suits. The part time genius, full time nut job reported to SHIELD the week after, claiming to be an active consultant whose presence was absolutely fundamental to the bare workings of an organisation he didn't even like.

Project Insight got its green light that month.

*

There’s a huge difference between having a secret organisation keeping the world safe and having weapons of mass destruction, operated at the orders of an unelected few that could potentially wipe out the planet and go against everything they've worked for. She had fought and argued and glared her point clear, fiercer than she ever did, even during the Avengers Initiative.

Fury just pointed at nuclear missiles and raised an eyebrow.

She didn't bother arguing the idea of nuclear deterrence and how those were rarely used in actual situations. Fury would not change course once the target was locked, that was what made him a good director in the first place.

*

When Fury sends a team of pirates to take down their own vessel in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she wasn't surprised, not really. She came into her post knowing that SHIELD was just about the organisation with the highest number of moles and leaks in it’s ranks and that sometimes, even authority could mean nothing. Fury may not have a clean ledger or a completely agreeable moral compass, but he had some sort of one.

He trusted her with most of his secrets, the least she could do was to reciprocate that trust.

Besides, when Fury decides to go off the book, he usually has a damn good reason. If he couldn't save the world as Director of SHIELD, he would save the world as a rogue agent.

(SHIELD being out of Fury’s control scared her more than she would acknowledge.)

*

And okay, she’ll admit that Fury being half-dead surprised her just that little bit. Just a tad, really. Nothing mind-numbing or emotionally destabilising. _At all._

She rejoined Captain and Natasha by the glass, brows furrowed, face terse, fists clenched in the most natural manner possible. The doctor picked up a syringe without suspecting a thing and administered it.

A minute, then another.

His heart rate was growing steadier and then…

Fury flat-lined and Hill exhaled sharply, though her companions took it as a sign of shock, not relief. A hint of appropriate moisture in her eyes complemented both Natasha’s despair and Roger’s grief.

(It had been a long while since she cried genuine tears, she wasn't sure if she still knew how.)

One day she might actually have to watch him die, but she was not going to think about that even for a second. For now she would just concentrate on getting Banner a thank-you card.

*

(A little part of her is surprised by Natasha’s tears, but then and again, they were all humans.)

*

She preferred not to think about Sitwell.

Not now.

Not ever.

*

But she couldn't avoid thinking about _Jasper._

Not of the times he had saved her life, not of the hours she spent learning from him, not of the secrets and jokes and stories they had shared, as senior SHIELD agents.

(As friends.)

Before her very own eyes, her (un)holy trio had shattered into pieces - falling apart like pieces of fallen helicarriers.

Phil, who spent decades treading between black and white, who bled out in the most painful way possible against a dull wall in his favourite shirt, who would buy them donuts and send birthday cards, who would raise an eyebrow at the slightest mischief but break all rules for his childhood idol.

Jasper, the guy who you could joke around and crap about virtually anything to, the guy who they had decided was trustworthy enough to up a level when the Avengers Initiative began, the guy who _was her friend_ , whose remains she never tried and never wanted to find. As though not seeing him, exposed as HYDRA, would leave her memories of him untainted, as the agent who banned Galaga and the manchild who gushed over the score.

(She was the lone leg of a dysfunctional tripod.)

Hill spent the next month avoiding that road, smack in the middle of D.C, even if she was running late. She didn't know what she was more afraid of - the telltale sign of hardened crimson smeared onto the tar or nothing at all, as though his existence had been extinguished like a fly.

*

She might eventually admit to being surprised at herself. Never had she even considered the possibility of taking down SHIELD.

_Regimes fall every day_ , Natasha would quote at her. She was not Natasha Romanov however, and SHIELD was nothing like any other regime.

_Believe in the system_ , she would retort.

She believed in the system, she really did. Even now, she still did.

But SHIELD had warped into HYDRA, so she channelled her inner Natalia Romanova and sent _her_ helicarriers into _her_ Triskelion, bringing down the entity of SHIELD and her world to its knees.

(What happens when the system fails?)

*

She was, however, very, very surprised to find herself sitting in the HR department of Stark Industries, opposite Stark with a lie detector on her arm.

(She heard Stark was good at putting broken toys back together.)

At night, she would cry over the name Jasper and hate the name Sitwell, dwell in inexplicit sadness over SHIELD and over all the little bits of her life she had lost. She would force herself to set aside the little protocols she drafted and life habits she cultivated because she was no longer SHIELD and SHIELD was no longer there. Then she would sniff with no tears and sob with no sound, like she did when she was still SHIELD, which was all she knew to do.

All she knew was SHIELD.

Yet right now was day and day was a time when Maria Hill did not show grief. So she sat back and smiled a little, like the confident, calm commander she was known to be.

From the Air Force to SHIELD took three years. From Level 3 to Level 8 was another five. At that time, it was as though her life had solidified, trickling forward briefing by briefing. Being Level 10 lasted four years. Four incredibly turbulent, verging on insane, years. And now she was commencing the fourth phase of her career.

She knew that SHIELD would form again one day. Perhaps under a different name, perhaps under a different person, but the essence of SHIELD was one the world could not do without.

Till that day, she would keep on going because that was all she knew.


End file.
